Cancer is Contagious Because of Love

When I was a little boy, my mother broke the news to me without a single tear. She was so strong during this time of melancholy. She left her tears for her pillow. I remember this because late at night I would hear quiet sobs through our thin walls. I will never forget the day my mother and grandmother told me the diagnoses.

"Mom? What's wrong?" The doctors and nurses had left the room my grandmother, mother, and I were staying in. She was looking at me with solemn eyes and I couldn't help but wonder what the doctor had just whispered into her ear.

She looked at my grandmother, who was old with age and barely strong enough to sit up from the cot she was resting on, and whispered to her the answer I wanted. My grandmother began to cry, and she hugged my mother tightly. When they connected eyes with me, they opened up enough space for me to crawl across the bed to hug them both. I started to cry too. I don't know why, but when I began crying, it seemed like my grandmother weeped worse.

"Mom?" I said worried, wiping my swollen red eyes.

My mother looked at me, and barely above a whisper she said, "Cancer. Once it infects the entire body, you won't be seeing me again."  My mother's finger turned white with out hard she was holding my grandmother and me. 

"I-I don't understand. Why won't I see you again, Mom?" I was so scared now, and my tears softly rolled down my cheeks.

She grabbed me, and kissed my forehead hard. She pulled me off the hospital bed into her chair and rocked me back and forth. I found it so comforting, but I still didn't know why she was so sad.

After two months of chemotherapy, we went home. My grandmother passed away during this hard time, which made everything worse for my mother. Not only did she weep for me at night, but also for her mother. When I layed in bed, listening over the beeping of the machine, I could her her cry out my name. She was all alone in her room, but I was always too tired to get up and comfort her. I began to cry too. This is what she meant. I would never see her again because she couldn't hear the machine's beeping fading. "Mom." I said, but with my tired, soar throat, it came out like a whimper. I died that night.

When my mother woke up that morning, she found my body cold; lips and finger tips blue. I was still, and the machine beside my bed never stopped sounding off the alarm of my death. She didn't hear it until she stopped crying. She hasn't stopped crying since.

I watched her call the hospital. I watched her call the funeral home. I watched her help them bury me. And I watched her set flowers down infront of my headstone that read:

                                                                1945-1951

                                                        Gregory John Barnse

                                                 Love Does Not Fade in Cancer